


fire

by cave_canem



Series: magic in your veins [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 15:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16200032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cave_canem/pseuds/cave_canem
Summary: Neil can feel his magic leave him as Andrew walks closer: like a poison that is also Neil’s salvation, he hides him in plain sight better than any lead pendant could ever do.





	fire

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, cross-posted with tumblr.

The first few weeks Neil spends living in the apartment Wymack rents above the Foxhole with the others, he collects secrets like a kleptomaniac. He keeps his secure and close to his heart and picks the others’ like flowers, pressing them between the blank pages of his mind.

He’s forgotten what it’s like to live with people.

Running is a learned skill, but one Neil can’t bring himself to let go of. He stays holed up in his apartment for the first week, not daring to go anywhere Andrew’s influence might ease off. The first time Andrew brings his family and Kevin out to a nightclub, he spends the night awake in his bedroom, sweating his stress out by working out. He doesn’t dare to go on a run: if Andrew’s protection wears off, Neil is dead.

Or so he thinks.

The ninth day, he leaves before he goes completely crazy. It’s early in the morning, just before dawn; Neil draws back the covers, messily wrapped around his body from his inability to stay still long enough to sleep, steps into his shoes and runs down the stairs and out in the street before anyone can stop him, himself included.

He runs far too long; by the time he finds his way back again in the unfamiliar part of the city, he’s out of breath and can barely feel his feet. He collapses in the lounge behind the shop to which all of Wymack’s employees-turned-tenants have access.

Andrew’s presence is always easily announced. He’s quiet and difficult to predict, but his closeness is always disclosed by the swooping sensation in Neil’s guts. It’s unmistakable, especially for someone who lived for nine years with a lead magic suppressor. He can feel his magic leave him as Andrew walks closer: like a poison that is also Neil’s salvation, he hides him in plain sight better than any lead pendant could ever do.

Still, Andrew’s abrasive personality doesn’t make him easy to deal with. He’s violent and terribly unempathetic, self-centered enough to care and protect the people he’s allowed to come close by buying their souls like he’s the devil.

Neil doesn’t trust him as far as he can throw him. Considering that he’s not even sure he could touch him without being sick, that’s not very far.

The other Foxes don’t seem to care. Matt and Dan are always showering Neil with abridged courses on pop culture he’s missed on, Nicky won’t stop playing friendly with him by inviting him out. Even Kevin comes up to Neil one evening.

“You need to train,” he says, serious as ever. “Come on.”

Neil follows because Kevin’s assertiveness is strangely disorienting. He doesn’t doubt that Neil will follow him; he doesn’t even look back. Neil isn’t sure what he even wants until they go down to the basement and Kevin opens the door to the training room.

“No,” Neil says, taking a step back.

Kevin frowns. “Andrew always goes up to the roof when I want to train. His influence can’t touch us here, not in this room.” He gestures to the wall. “Blocks out everything.”

“I’m not doing magic.”

Neil wins the staring contest, mostly because Kevin doesn’t have the patience to try and make him change his mind.

“Fine,” he snaps. “But stay here. I need supervision in case I hurt myself.”

Neil isn’t sure why at first, but then he remembers the glove on Kevin’s left hand, the oddly wrinkled skin underneath whenever he takes it off. When Kevin starts to move, it’s even more obvious: magic was what destroyed his hand. Magic wounds can never heal quite as well as regular ones; the scarring is always more intense, more painful.

Kevin trains for almost an hour straight, first summoning basic elements—a flame, a gust of wind that slams Neil to the wall—until he’s distorting reality along the back wall in such a precise and meticulous way that Neil’s head is pounding just looking at it.

Kevin senses it first. His illusions disappear like cards swept aside by the wind. Like a ricochet in water, Neil only has time to marvel at the fact before he feels it too. Then the door is wrenched open.

“Kevin,” Andrew says, pale and blond in his dark clothes. “It’s time.”

“Already?” He doesn’t sound put out or frightened, though Andrew’s tone is almost threatening. Instead, he grabs the jacket he donned when he began and quickly crosses the room. “Let’s go.”

“Where are you going?” Neil can’t help but ask.

He doesn’t like Kevin much, but he doesn’t like this out-of-character obedience he shows toward Andrew.

“None of your business,” Andrew says, and turns away.

When they come back upstairs, Kevin and Andrew meet with the rest of their lot and disappear in the dimly lit street. Neil stands in the empty shop until he’s sure Andrew is far away: for a man as discreet as he is, this power is supremely inconvenient. Magic returns to Neil like water breaking free of a dam, submerging the riverbanks in its wake.

He’s been living with Andrew for too long. Sparks shoot out of his fingers without prompting like faulty electricity.

“Oh,” Allison says, poking her head through the back door. “Finally. I was beginning to think they would never leave.”

“That’s not very nice,” Renee says from behind the counter.

Neil jumps: he hadn’t even realized she was standing next to him. she’s not looking at him, but he can’t help shoving his hands deep into his pockets, trying to ignore the jittery feeling of his magic coming back to him in too forceful waves.

“Don’t you think Andrew suffers as much from his powers than you do?”

“I don’t care,” Allison says, but she looks too defensive to be truly honest. “I’d feel worse for him if he was an actual decent human being, but we all know that’ll never happen. Oh, well,” she adds, “I don’t know how he manages to keep Aaron and Nicky around. Kevin I understand, God knows they’re both obsessed with each other—”

“Allison.”

Allison is already gone. Renee shakes her hand, smiles at Neil, and picks up the account book to bring to Wymack every day. Before leaving, she blows a little wind, just enough to flip the sign on the door from “Open” to “Close”.

* * *

Neil fights against the urge to go back down to the basement for most of the evening before caving in. The building is quiet: there is sound from Wymack’s apartment, but the other Foxes are all gathered at Allison’s. He’s alone on the way down, alone when he opens the heavy door like he saw Kevin do, alone standing in the large windowless room.

The light is dim; it catches on bright surfaces all over the room, turning everything wrong. For a while, Neil can only stare at his jacket dumped in a corner, the enticing way light reflects off the metallic zipper.

Then he starts.

Like Kevin, he follows a logical order, simple to complex. Unlike Kevin, he’s covered in sweat within the first fifteen minutes and struggles to summon more than a small flame.

He’s out of practice.

Magic is raw and rough as energy courses through his body, but it’s like grasping at running water. Everything slips away before he can grasp it long enough to use it.

In his frustration, Neil makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, an old movement ingrained in his memory. He can remember the Butcher strong arms punching the air, causing damage thirty feet away. He seemed so powerful: everything was always in his grasp, physical or not.

Neil doesn’t manage the violence of the destruction his father is capable of. Sparks crackle to life in his wake, filling the air with the sharp tang of burned hair and the pattering sound of gunshots.

Incensed, Neil snaps his fingers, once, twice, three times; his fingertips slide against one another, too damp and weak to be useful, until finally—

A flame springs on his finger, grows steadily until it’s not so fragile that Neil’s breathing could put it out.

It’s beautiful. It’s dangerous: it’s something Neil has been denied for years. It’s mesmerizing like hot flames eating out the car where his mother body’s rests, spitting out a blackened shell and cooling bones.

It stops suddenly, sniffed away.

Attacking is an instinct. Neil whirls around, leg extended behind himself, and meets the unbending strength of Andrew’s arm, catching him right in the guts.

“Fuck,” Neil cries out before collapsing on the ground.

The contact, brief as it was, is enough to make him drop to his knees, nauseated and dizzy. He swallows back bile and looks up.

“You shouldn’t play with fire,” Andrew says. This time it’s a threat: Neil has heard too many in his life not to recognize one when it’s addressed to him directly.

“Fuck you,” he wheezes, still on the ground.

“Kevin was very disappointed you refused to train with him. He seems to be under the impression you could be a skilled witch.”

Neil glares. “I have no interests in training with him.”

“Clearly.” Andrew looks around, face blank as usual. He sounds truly bored. “You’re not his level anyway.”

It shouldn’t rile Neil up; he’s not supposed to give in to the most basic insults. Still, it hurts. Getting the feeling that his childhood was stolen from Neil right when Kevin spent his honing his magic skills is still too raw, a stolen goods that can never be replaced.

He gets up to his feet. Andrew’s already waiting for him: it’s only a matter of blocking the doorway with his arm to ensure Neil doesn’t move. Pushing Andrew away would mean losing the battle with his stomach.

“I don’t trust you,” Andrew says.

“Feeling’s mutual.”

“Be quiet. Liars like you don’t talk, they listen.” He leans in closer. “I don’t trust you, and I don’t know why Wymack let you stay, but I won’t let you put what’s in my charge in danger.”

“I have no interest in Kevin, period,” Neil snaps. “Let me go.”

“You didn’t understand,” Andrew says, leaning all the way across the door. “Kevin is intrigued anyway. He wants to train you and he wants your promise to do something with yourself.”

“Sounds familiar?” mutters Neil.

Andrew ignores him.

“I wanted to get rid of you,” he says, “but Wymack forbade me. Since he still holds my lease, I don’t have a choice. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’ll follow me to the roof and tell me exactly who you are and what you’re doing here. If you lie, or I don’t like the answers, you’ll make direct acquaintance with the sidewalk down there.”

“Fuck you,” Neil says. “You can’t do that, you—”

“If your answers are satisfactory or even just interesting, I’ll let you stay.”

Neil tenses. He’s not scared of Andrew’s death threats, but this is more than just not being pushed off a roof. This is the authorization to live like he wants; the promise of his privacy being finally respected.

“I’m listening.”

“You’re interesting to Kevin,” Andrew says, holding out one hand. “That makes you valuable to me, since I need Kevin fighting here and growing out his spine.” Holding out the other palm, he weights them like scales. “I dislike you, but you could be useful.”

“You’re going to let me stay,” Neil says.

“Maybe, maybe not. Move it.”

They brush against one another when Neil goes through the door. Repressing a shiver, he precedes Andrew to the roof, stopping at the top of the stairs to let him shove the door open.

The roof is wide and gray, the large expanse of concrete cluttered by chimney pipes and enclosures for electrical equipment. He steps close to the edge; without railing, it’s a sure fall right to his death. Andrew’s threats are beginning to look more and more realistic.

The door closes with a bang. When Neil turns around, Andrew is standing three feet away from him, solid and unmovable like a rock.

Neil doesn’t want to be crushed: he takes a deep breath and starts talking.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @[jsteneil](http://jsteneil.tumblr.com).


End file.
